The legendary catcher gave an emotional speech, thanking a number of special people who helped to get him from his childhood and adolescence, and through his tenure in professional baseball. When former team president Chuck Armstrong introduced Griffey to the dinner guests, he broke down before speaking a word.
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Griffey Jr, better known as Junior or The Kid, is the first Seattle Mariner and only number overall pick to have a place in Cooperstown. If you’re nervous on the putting green, it’s a reliable indication you’ll have jitters on your first drive.
It made Griffey consider the possibility. For 22 years, Griffey showed no flaws. The tears were evidence of how much a man once perceived as carefree actually cares.
They got the parents involved with various jobs in the project and told the players, who were immediately in favor of making the special journey. “But fans had come from all over”. “Those three (Trey, Taryn and Tevin) are the only ones that can do that to me”.
“Now, see, they’ll twist that around, the fans will, that he doesn’t like it”, Griffey said. Even though I had been around baseball all my life, doesn’t mean that I have arrived.
“I’m going to leave you with one thing”.
Trey, a wide receiver at the University of Arizona who was drafted in the 24th round by the Mariners last month, texted his father mid speech, “I love you, man”. “Don’t do that?’ And you do it anyway?” Griffey Jr. later called playing with his dad “probably the greatest feeling I’ve had as a player” and Griffey Sr.
“Would I do it all over again?”
Griffey was not the first baseball legend to have a bawl on induction day. That he got in along with Mike Piazza, the lowest, serves only to underscore how he met – or, to be more precise, exceeded – heightened expectations.
Bad blood: Diamondbacks honcho Tony La Russa was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, while baseball analyst and chronicler Peter Gammons won the Spink Award for excellence in sports writing in 2004. He had swag for days, wore his hat backwards, flashed a million dollar smile with a $10 million swing of beauty.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. As a young man growing up in baseball, Neil Herman always liked the Los Angeles Dodgers as his favorite Major League Baseball team. The inevitable rundown of his expressed to the fans, friend, relatives, but he also thanked all of his former teams the Mariners, Reds, and White Sox.
Piazza was drafted by the Dodgers in the 62nd round of the draft.
“Nothing can prepare you for those emotions that you feel, because of everything the Hall encompasses and the history that was behind us on that stage”, Piazza said, noting 48 Hall of Famers on hand to watch their latest colleagues. Griffey told some tales, including one with his oldest son, Trey, now a senior wide receiver with the University of Arizona, but earlier in his youth a harsh television critic. It was Frank Thomas’ idea.
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“It is cool and exciting that someone is going into the Hall of Fame”, said Phoenixville pitcher Matt Osisek-Byrne.
